Category Archives: War with Iran

From Big Tech to Mass Grave

Posted on by under Human Shields, Neutrality and Complicity, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine, War with Iran

Here’s an item from Business Insider of the sort you see just about every day in that publication, at least if you read it every day, as I do. It’s so common that its implications seem to go in one ear and out the other. “More big tech execs are joining the Army Reserve as senior officers,” we’re told.

  • The Army has added three more tech executives to its special Detachment 201 reserve unit.
  • Det 201 members join as lieutenant colonels, advising the service on AI, cyber, and modernization.
  • The new troops come from places like Cloudflare, a major private equity firm, and Facebook AI Research.
  • A second crop of tech executives entered the Army Reserve last week, expanding the service’s ties with Big Tech as it continues a dramatic effort to modernize its equipment and systems and better prepare for modern warfare.

Those who recently joined include Dane Knecht, the chief technology officer of Cloudflare; Sam Pullara, managing director and CTO of Sutter Hill Ventures, a Palo Alto investment firm; and Serkan Piantino, a former Reddit executive and co-founder of Facebook AI Research.

The executives have joined a unit known as Detachment 201, a special unit “designed to bridge the gap between private-sector innovation and military modernization,” the Army said in a press release, reflecting the Pentagon’s push to leverage private-sector technical expertise to address complex national security and defense challenges.

Members are reservists, can work remotely, and must complete a minimum of 112 hours of service annually.

“Their primary role is to serve as senior advisors to help drive the Army Transformation Initiative, concentrated on high-level technological strategies in areas such as cyber, AI and machine learning applications, and other data-driven capabilities,” Army spokesperson Lt. Col. Orlando Howard said in an email to Business Insider.

They join four other tech leaders who entered the Army Reserve one year ago: Shyam Sankar, the chief technology officer of Palantir; Andrew Bosworth, the chief technology officer of Meta; Kevin Weil, former chief product officer at OpenAI; and Bob McGrew, an advisor at Thinking Machines Lab and former chief research officer at OpenAI.

All entered the Army as lieutenant colonels, a rank that takes most officers over a decade to reach. The senior entry, known as a “direct commission,” is not unheard of, though. Most military medical providers, chaplains, and veterinarians join at slightly more senior ranks, though they undergo their own version of boot camp, while Det 201 does not.

“The program selects applicants who are highly skilled civilian technology professionals at the executive or C-suite level to serve as part-time strategic advisers,” Howard said. “These officers use their advanced expertise in commercial tech and private industry to offer a different perspective and advise senior Army leaders on solving military problems.”

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J’Accuse

Posted on by under character based voting, Electoral Ethics and Politics, moralism, Palestine, Ukraine, War with Iran

Bret Stephens vs. Graham Platner
Graham Platner just won the Maine Democratic primary. I’m glad. To be honest, I can’t say that I was all that invested in Platner’s candidacy. I only really took notice of it a few days ago, and only because it belatedly occurred to me that Platner’s popularity is a slap in the face to centrist liberals, something I greatly enjoy. So I’m feeling good about their misery today.

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Another Night of Military Exercises Using Civilians as Human Shields

Posted on by under Health Care Series, Human Shields, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine, War with Iran

Not a joke headline. It happened the other day in Pasadena, California. It almost sounds like a comedy skit intended to unmask the hypocrisy of “Western” claims that Hamas uses “civilians as human shields.” We can’t, of course, be entirely sure of the military’s intentions here. The residents might not have been human shields; they might be simulated targets, after all. But that doesn’t really improve things.

PASADENA, Calif. (KABC) — A late-night military training exercise in Pasadena startled residents as helicopters flew overhead and landed at a long-closed medical facility.

The exercise began around 8:30 p.m.Wednesday, with helicopters landing on the former St. Luke’s Medical Center building, which has been closed for more than 20 years. Residents said the noise continued into the early morning hours.

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Bodies Blocking Bombs

Posted on by under activism, anarchism, Neutrality and Complicity, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine, War with Iran

New Jersey Activists Blockade Port Newark
Though press attention is currently riveted on what’s happening at Delaney Hall (and with good reason), the press release below describes a largely unnoticed activist action that took place at the same time at virtually the same place–the industrial east side of Newark and Elizabeth, New Jersey. Taking a cue from successes in Oakland (see this and this), activists are putting their bodies on the line to block the shipment of weapons out of Port Newark/Elizabeth to Israel. (I’ll be posting a report on a prior action at the same location from this past October, and also on activity by the Oakland Peoples’ Arms Embargo.)

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Sonia Sotomayor Smiles for Palestine

Posted on by under cancel culture, Palestine, slices of life, War with Iran, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, activism, Neutrality and Complicity, Princeton University

Our Stop the Wars rally found its way into Princeton University’s Reunions celebration, where we spent several hours making our anti-war case to the approbation and disapprobation of the several thousand revelers marching in Princeton’s annual P-rade. Among those apparently expressing approbation was Princeton alumna Sonia Sotomayor, as revealed in this photo, in which she smiled directly at activist leader Sireen Sawalha, who was standing right next to me.

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Tomasi and Flier on “Commencement Neutrality”

Posted on by under activism, cancel culture, moralism, Neutrality and Complicity, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine, War with Iran

I recently attended a webinar on “commencement neutrality” sponsored by Heterodox Academy. In it, the presenters, John Tomasi and Jeffrey Flier, argue that

Students receiving diplomas while a speaker condemns their political values, whether progressive or conservative, are justified in objecting.

The graduation stage is not an op-ed page, a political blog, or a partisan rally, though some wish to make it one.

This claim extends the idea of “institutional neutrality” to commencement speeches, and is elaborated at further length in Flier and Tomasi’s recent Boston Globe piece, “Keep Politics Out of Commencement Speeches” (May 14, paywalled). The basic argument is that commencement speeches have a ceremonial or celebratory function which is incompatible with the discomfort provoked by sharp political commentary. 

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NJ-12: The Trance Is the Motion

Posted on by under Electoral Ethics and Politics, Neutrality and Complicity, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine, War with Iran

I’ve so far received campaign literature or text messages from seven of the candidates in the NJ-12 congressional race: Sue Altman, Brad Cohen, Adam Hamawy, Adrian Mapp, Verlina Reynolds-Jackson, Shanel Robinson, and Squire Servance. Of these, Hamawy is the only one who’s mentioned ending the Iran War as an explicit part of his pitch. The other six either say nothing, or next to nothing.*

Try to get your mind around this evasion: six out of seven candidates in a Democratic primary don’t think that our being involved in the most irrational and ruinous war in decades is even worth mentioning. Aggression means nothing to them, even when committed by their supposed arch-enemy, Trump. Mass death means nothing to them. Regional war means nothing to them. The potential destruction of the entire oil infrastructure of the Persian Gulf means nothing to them. The potential for a ground invasion means nothing to them. The potential for nuclear war means nothing to them. The indefinite closure of the Strait of Hormuz means nothing to them. The blockade of the Persian Gulf means nothing to them. The recent increase in fuel prices means nothing, the prospect of inflation means nothing, and the expected downstream consequences of the closure and blockade mean nothing.

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Calling All Palestine Activists

Posted on by under activism, General announcements, Neutrality and Complicity, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine, princeton, Princeton University, War with Iran

Converge on Princeton: Reunions, May 21-24
I’ve been making the case to pro-Palestine activists wherever I go: the experience of being shut down at LeMoyne, NYU, U of Texas at Dallas, and Rutgers (with the prospect of retaliation at Michigan) and elsewhere is certainly a dispiriting one, but the answer is not to keep demanding entry where entry has effectively been denied, but to find opportunities for visibility when and where they present themselves. Continue reading →